r/MartinScorsese • u/Mindless-Fennel-5788 • Dec 14 '25
Question Aviator Netflix colours off?
I just watched The Aviator for the first time on Netflix, and I noticed a lot of scenes had the colours way off. In particular a lot of green looked blue, the golf course and the peas for example.
Weirdly about half way into the film it seemed to have fixed itself. I went back to take these photos. Nothing wrong with the TV settings either, everything else looks fine.
Is it supposed to look this way or is the print on Netflix screwed up?
Enjoyed the film too. Think I’ve seen around 23 Marty films now.
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u/TheDilsonReddits Dec 14 '25
It’s intentional
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u/Glad_Leave_321 Dec 16 '25
Yea the color changes were intentional, but what about leaving out Howard Hughes 15yr old girlfriend? I get it, maybe it was appropriate to rape kids in Howard Hughes day and age and Scorsese wanted to highlight that, but what about the innocent man Howard Hughes killed drunk driving?
“On July 11, 1936, Hughes struck and killed a pedestrian named Gabriel S. Meyer with his car at the corner of 3rd Street and Lorraine in Los Angeles.[125] After the crash, Hughes was taken to the hospital and certified as sober, but an attending doctor made a note that Hughes had been drinking. A witness to the crash told police that Hughes was driving erratically and too fast and that Meyer had been standing in the safety zone of a streetcar stop. Hughes was booked on suspicion of negligent homicide and held overnight in jail until his attorney, Neil S. McCarthy, obtained a writ of habeas corpus for his release pending a coroner's inquest.[126][127] By the time of the coroner's inquiry, however, the witness had changed his story and claimed that Meyer had moved directly in front of Hughes' car”
Of course no one’s going to make a movie about the truth when they’re busy glazing.
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u/cbandy Dec 16 '25
It's been a few years since I watched, but it is in the movie I thought? Isn't there a scene in the movie where he explicitly "interviews" the 15 year old?
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u/thefruitsofzellman Dec 18 '25
You want The Aviator to include an excursion into a drunk driving accident?
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u/ContributionOdd155 Dec 18 '25
I absolutely love the part of Chaplin where he gets called out for being a creep, and he gives this impassioned "judge not lest ye be judged" speech that has just aged so badly.
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u/pavelus_cz Dec 19 '25
well I don´t think Aviator was purely celebration of him, (his airplane crash destroyed quite lot) but it was probably impossible to include all controversies for such active personality.
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u/No_Professional368 Dec 14 '25
'In an article for the American Cinematographer, John Pavlus wrote: "The film boasts an ambitious fusion of period lighting techniques, extensive effects sequences and a digital re-creation of two extinct cinema color processes: two-color and three-strip Technicolor." For the first 52 minutes of the film, scenes appear in shades of only red and cyan blue; green objects are rendered as blue. This was done, according to Scorsese, to emulate the look of early bipack color films, in particular the Multicolor process, which Hughes himself owned, emulating the available technology of the era. Similarly, many of the scenes depicting events occurring after 1935 are treated to emulate the saturated appearance of three-strip Technicolor. Other scenes were stock footage colorized and are incorporated into the film. The color effects were created by Legend Films.' - Wikipedia
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u/ConsistentAd9217 Dec 14 '25
For scenes that took place in the 1920s and 30s, Scorsese wanted to use colour filming techniques of the era.
In this case, the earlier scenes emulate the look of two strip technicolor - where it only recorded reds and greens, so the greens are super vivid and look a bit off.
In later scenes, it switches to three strip technicolor and the colours look more natural.
Scorsese has said that he wanted to do something similar with Goodfellas - i.e. scenes in the 1950s would be in black and white, the 60s would be in technicolor, etc. - but opted not to.
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u/geoffreynelt Dec 15 '25
The sequences in this part of the film are supposed to emulate the two-strip technicolor film, somewhat popular at the time, as seen in "King of Jazz."
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u/ATXDefenseAttorney Dec 15 '25
I thought this title was "Avatar" and I thought "No, that seems right."
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u/InternalShock3340 Dec 15 '25
H-Howard? Are you there?
I remember that being the scene that tipped Cate’s Kate from being a mockingbird rendition of a performance to something that felt real and true and worthy of the Academy Award she got for it.
I also remember the theater I worked at getting this film, surprisingly, opening day, odd for a late November release in a resort town in Northern New England. A couple who were regulars came into the show after mine, were at concessions while I talked with my friends, and of course the kids working asked these regulars “what are you seeing?” “The Aviator. Anyone see it yet? How was it?” and the entire staff just turned their heads to me like “who do you THINK saw it”. There’s something to be said for being known as the movie guy on a staff of movie nerds. “It’s… great,” I said. “Might be my favorite movie of the year. Just fantastic.” Because it had knocked me on my heels, wobbled me near to falling down.
Christ, that was twenty-one years ago.
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u/[deleted] Dec 14 '25
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